In addition to their herbs common use in cooking, herbs have been used in herbal treatments and herbal medicine since shortly after the beginning of human culture. Herbs have also been used as dietary additives to enhance daily activity in certain cultures. Typically herbs used in such treatments and as dietary additives are ingested as an infusion or tea, or are applied externally as a poultice. In such applications, the herbs employed are typically mixtures of many chemical compounds. Generally, the proper use of widely accepted herbal treatments does not give rise to adverse side effects in a patient. Although the effectiveness of herbal treatments is firmly established in those cultures which have employed such treatments for centuries, it has not yet been "legitimized" in Western scientific documentation.
Western pharmaceuticals are generally employed as either single compounds or mixtures of relatively few compounds administrated either alone or, more preferably, in a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier. The research and development of these single compounds as drugs is in large part due to the creation of strong scientific and clinical documentation. Unfortunately, many of these drugs have a relatively short history of use and many have been shown to produce serious side effects.
Although to some extent a generalization, Western pharmaceutical expression could be considered as a science of healing, while traditional herbal medicine may be viewed as the art of healing. In modern day, herbal medicine, although gaining some acceptance in Western society, still faces several specific challenges. First, in the opinion of many highly trained medical practitioners there is the view that herbal medicine lacks sufficient scientific support data in our highly technical and science-oriented society. Secondly, there is concern about which components of an herbal remedy are pharmaceutically effective. Furthermore, the question arises as to the concentrations or dosages present of such pharmaceutically effective components of herbal remedies. In short, traditional medical practitioners are concerned with a lack of both qualitative and quantitative standards for herbal medications. Such a lack of standardization is viewed as hindering the ability to prescribe and adjust dosages of such nontraditional or herbal medications. The lack of such standardization has also lead to a reluctance on the part of regulatory agencies in further investigating and acceptance of such nontraditional medications.
Although not meeting some of the criteria of Western traditional medicine, such herbal compositions are known to be quite effective in treatment of a variety of maladies with little or no side effects. In part, the pharmaceutical activity in many instances is attributable not only to the presence of specific biologically active compounds but also to a synergistic effect resulting from the combination of two or more chemical components present in the herbal mixture.
Since herbal treatments, defined as both herbal medications and biologically enhancing herbal compositions, are derived from plants, the chemical composition of such herbal treatments varies according to a number of factors, not the least of which are the genetic composition and growing conditions in which the plant is produced as well as the harvest conditions and isolation of the active components of the plant. Accordingly, biological variants of a particular plant may typically be expected to produce significant variations in quantities of particular chemical components found in the plant. Likewise, even in the same biological variant of a plant, differences in soil, moisture and other growing conditions may significantly affect the quantities of specific chemical components produced by the plant.
Finally, the manner in which a plant is processed can drastically influence the relatively proportions and total amounts of specific chemical components isolated from the plant. Thus, such steps as harvesting, storage, reduction in particle size, expression of liquid components and extraction all determine the proportions and amounts of chemical components and hence the pharmaceutical activity of the isolated product.
Considering the many factors which influence the composition and pharmaceutical activity of herbal compositions, it is desirable to employ methods which result in the standardization of herbal compositions both with respect to the chemical compositions thereof and the pharmaceutical activity of such chemical mixtures. In addition, although it may be impossible to standardize growing conditions of plants grown on a large scale, it is desirable to standardize processing conditions in order to obtain such standardized herbal compositions. Furthermore, being able to accurately determine and compare the compositions of biological mixtures, particularly plant or herbal mixtures, would allow processing conditions to be controlled to obtain high pharmacological activity. With such methods available to the scientific community, not only would physicians be able to prescribe specified dosages of herbal compositions with confidence, but herbal composition "manufacturers" would achieve higher pharmaceutical activity of such mixtures, improved quality control and the ability to differentiate herbal mixtures from varying sources.